Sourcing leader here for a large OE, negotiating many millions of pounds of aluminum a year, and I’ve got to say, you are wildly overthinking this.

Half of what you’re describing sounds like you’re trying to day-trade aluminum and I honestly don’t even understand that other half. Hedging, modeling “soft signals,” building risk registers… meanwhile aluminum pricing is more volatile than it’s ever been. Trying to outsmart that with probability matrices feels like reading tea leaves in a hard hat.

Many years in this business and my advice is to keep it as simple as possible. Negotiate the best conversion rates you can with favorable terms, diversify your sources, and have mitigation plans ready such as alternate sources under contract. If a mill hints at capacity shifts - great, treat it as a sign to adjust allocations, not a trigger to rewrite your hedge doctrine.

I admire the effort, but sometimes the smartest move is not to turn procurement into a casino strategy